Bipolar Employee Entitled to More Disability
Payments

March 5, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - An employee of the
Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) is
entitled to get disability payments for more than two years
because her bipolar disorder is a physical and not a mental
ailment, a federal judge ruled.

US District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr., of the US District
Court for the District of Columbia, said Jane Fitts’
benefits shouldn’t have been limited by the 24-month cap in
Fannie Mae’s health plan for mental illnesses, according to
a BNA report.

Lawyers for Fitts had amply demonstrated the physical
relationship between bipolar disorder and the body, Kennedy
ruled.

UNUM Life Insurance Co., administrator of Fannie Mae’s
disability plan, paid Fitts for 24 months after she first
received the bipolar disorder diagnosis in 1995 and then
stopped because of the plan’s mental illness limit.
Fitts then sued Fannie Mae and UNUM.

Medical Testimony

Before issuing his ruling Kennedy heard medical
testimony from both sides about the scientific basis for
bipolar disorder.

Several doctors called by Fitts said she was genetically
predisposed to develop bipolar disease and bipolar disease
was a physical illness because it is a neurobiological
disorder that affects the physical and chemical structure
of the brain.

Fannie Mae argued it should be considered a mental
ailment because it is listed as such in psychological texts
and treated using psychotherapy and psychotropic drugs.

However, the plan’s mental illness definition as a
“mental, nervous or emotional disease” was ambiguous,
Kennedy said.

“Defendants’ argument that bipolar disorder plainly
falls within their disability policy’s definition for
mental illness is patently without merit because the plan’s
definition merely re-phrases the term mental illness by
using equally vague terms,” Kennedy wrote. “The definition
fails to specify whether a disability qualifies as a mental
illness based on its causes, symptoms or forms of
treatment.”